large as all the visible matter in the galaxy itself.
The jet of light protruding from one side of M87 is a hot stream of ionized gas ejected from the galaxyΓÇÖs core at enormous speedΓÇötens of thousands of kilometers per second. This is so fast that the Doppler shift causes the radiation, which ordinarily would be in longer radio wavelengths, to appear in the shorter optical wavelengths. The radiation is the result of synchrotron emission caused by electrons spiraling at enormous speeds in intense galactic magnetic fields.
M87 and its jet provide the first hard evidence of one of the most peculiar objects in the universeΓÇöa supermassive black hole,
